Dear WordPress Followers How quickly a year passes. It is time for my annual subscriber drive, where you get to choose whether to make a small payment to cover ongoing expenses of maintaining the Bobwords website. FOMM is a free weekly essay offered in the spirit of Citizen Journalism. There are no ads on the website and I intend to keep it that way. If you are a fan of FOMM, which began in May…

We who have always associated ‘Black Friday’ with Friday the 13th (unlucky for some), were no doubt confused by the retail rallying call of the past week. According to McCrindle Research, the US concept of Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), is gaining traction in Australia. ?Back in 2017, a McCrindle survey showed that 1 in 4 (24%) of Australians had never heard of Black Friday. Two years on, only 6% of Australians have never…

On my late evening dog walks in the rural village of Yangan near Warwick, it has become customary to wave to the volunteer firefighters as they arrive back at base. If they can lift their arms, they wave back. These volunteers, known in Australia as ‘firies’, are holding containment lines around multiple fires burning in the ranges around Cunningham’s Gap. The Cunningham Highway between Warwick and Brisbane has been closed for two weeks due to…

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s much-reported speech, where he referred to my cohort (the over-65s) as ‘an economic time bomb’, should not be seen as random. The speech to the conservative think tank, the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), was deeply calculated. Frydenberg’s thesis is that older Australians should work longer and take up re-training to help facilitate a return to the work force, thus easing the country’s social security burden. Frydenberg was immediately…